1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an Internet facsimile apparatus and method for inputting an e-mail address of a destination to the Internet facsimile apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, Internet facsimile apparatuses (hereinafter referred to as “IFAX”) as disclosed in the Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No.HEI 8-242326 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,881,233 are proposed. Such an IFAX requires the operator to input an e-mall address for destination before transmission.
If the destination is a G3 facsimile, the transmission source IFAX can request an IFAX near the destination G3 facsimile to relay the transmission. When the transmission source IFAX requests the relay IFAX to relay the transmission, the operator needs to input a relay address including a predetermined relay command in the IFAX mail address to the transmission source IFAX.
However, the IFAX is generally not provided with a keyboard dedicated to inputs of alphabetic characters as in the case of a conventional G3 facsimile apparatus. For example, with the conventional IFAX, it is possible to switch to alphabetic input mode and use function keys to enter alphabetic characters. However, since the function keys are relatively small, the conventional IFAX is susceptible to input errors when a relatively long mail address is input and is not operator-friendly.